A lot of material for price imagination: WACKER CHEMIE shares: There’s even more potential here | message

by Stephan Bauer, Euro am Sonntag

D.he news from Bavaria electrified stock marketers: WACKER CHEMIE wants to produce corona vaccine in Amsterdam in the future. The MDAX company has just signed a contract with the Tübingen biotech company CureVac to manufacture the vaccine CVnCoV. If the substance from Swabia receives the green light from the drug approval authorities, Wacker intends to manufacture over 100 million cans in the Netherlands each year.

Ironically, the smallest division of the specialty chemicals company from Munich is causing a stir in the markets, and the share jumped significantly. Will this make WACKER CHEMIE a vaccine winner? That has not yet been settled, after all, the Swabian corona opponent CVnCOV is only in phase 2 of the clinical studies. So far, however, candidates from other manufacturers who were developed using the new mRNA technology have achieved good to very good results in the later clinical phases.

WACKER boss Rudolf Staudigl should like the image-boosting news. In the current environment he has to save hard and has announced a workforce reduction of around 1,200 employees, 80 percent of them in Germany. This and other measures should reduce costs by 250 million euros per year by 2023.

There is cuts everywhere, the big exception: the Biosolutions division. More is being invested here. Capacities are being expanded, especially in Amsterdam. This applies to plants for the production of conventional vaccines. A brand new line for mRNA vaccines is currently being set up. The subsidiary WAKCER Biotech is a contract developer and manufacturer in the biopharmaceutical industry. In the quarter to the end of September, the Biosolutions division reported a ten percent increase in operating profit, with a margin of 14 percent. The group expects further growth here.

Biosolutions delivered in the quarter only 57 million of the 1.2 billion euro group turnover. The main business is chemical products such as silicones and polymers, in addition, Bayern produce high-purity silicon for solar cell production. While the high-volume silicone business is sensitive to the economy and has recently lost almost 30 percent of operating profit due to the corona-related downturn, the polymers are doing very well. They are used for building materials, for example. The market is booming because of the pandemic, the division’s operating profit recently rose by 75 percent to 85 million euros, delivering almost as much as the largest silicone division.

Solar industry is coming back

The development of polysilicon is very promising. The company is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of raw materials for solar cells. In the third quarter, the strongly cyclical business returned to the operating profit zone. For the coming year, the Bavarians expect the market for solar systems to make a comeback. If business spins, the effect on profits could be greater than that of vaccine production. Both would be good for the course.

Syringe: The vaccine report drew Share buyers on, the price has the 100 euro mark cracked. additional There is upside potential.

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Image sources: WACKER Chemie